Publication - 25 February, 2011
A new moratorium on forest destruction in Indonesia, due to be announced in days, will fail to protect vital rainforests unless urgent action is taken to increase its coverage, new maps by Greenpeace reveal.
Critically, the maps, released on 26 February 2011, show that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s proposed “moratorium” will fail to protect the vast majority of forests that provide habitat to orang-utans, tigers and other endangered species, and do little to protect forests that are not already off limits under Indonesia's existing laws.
Map 1: Red areas indicate forest and peatland areas that will not be protected by this draft moratorium. Grey areas indicate forest and peatland areas that were already protected. Black areas indicate areas the draft moratorium will protect.
The comparison between red and black shows how little this draft moratorium will actually do to protect Indonesian rainforest and peatland. Let's look a little closer:
Map 2: The grey lines indicate concession areas already allocated. Inside the red areas, which indicate forest and peatland that will remain unprotected by the draft moratorium, we can see concessions have already been allocated throughout these areas. The light grey indicates deep peat and the grey lines here show how much of this area has also already been allocated to industrial use.
These visualizations of the draft moratorium show that it fails to cover the majority of vulnerable forests that provide habitat to orang-utans, tigers and other endangered species, as it does little to protect forests that are not already off limits under Indonesia's existing laws. It must be strengthened to provide real protection to rainforests and the lives that depend on them.
See more maps that visualize the Indonesian Draft Moratorium on rainforests and peatlands:
Indonesia's Forests and Peatlands -proposed moratorium areas